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Matt Kapkow

Everyone in digital marketing has their heads in the cloud -- the marketing cloud, to be precise. The marketing cloud might very possibly be the most-discussed and at the same time, least-defined term digital marketing has ever seen (and we've seen a lot of new terminology and neologisms).

What is the marketing cloud? What's its promise, and what's its future? Let's unpack how marketing technology is evolving into that elusive cloud and the role it plays, and will play, in marketing's future. (Credit is due to CIO.com's Matt Kapko for sparking these thoughts in a recent interview.)

Marketing cloud promises and objectives

The marketing cloud promises to make all marketing operations faster, easier, more streamlined, efficient and optimized -- to deliver measureable results and actionable data that's integrated not only across marketing, but across the entire enterprise as well as the scope of customer experience with the brand, product and/or service.

Evolution

The marketing cloud is not yet ready for prime time. We're still in an era of hyper-growth, development, and refinement of not only marketing technologies, but also of marketing channels and media. The promise is that everything will somehow pan out, streamline, integrate and just plain work. The reality is that we're still very much in the cycle of building, invention, disruption, and innovating. There's little in marketing technology that's static or standardized. This shouldn't be confused with failure, but it's hard to adjust and refine during a period of hyper-growth.

Objectives

Integration is a huge issue. As an analyst, I've surveyed marketers on what enterprise software they want and need marketing technology to play nice with. Responses stray far from just marketing -- I've heard everything from financial software to telephony. But we're still at a stage where, for example, content software, social media software, and advertising technology exist in very separate silos. So, too, does digital asset management. And that's to say nothing of the need to integrate with outside vendor and technology partners. Other issues include marketers investing in one solution to solve a problem, then acquiring another software package with duplicative functionality. There's such quick evolution that basic education and understanding of the space is problematic.

Consumer trends and expectations

Consumers complicate the marketing cloud landscape even more. CRM, for example, is a function that exists outside of marketing, replete with its own tech solutions. Mobile, too, is often in a corporate silo -- enterprise organization certainly plays into this to reach the right consumer with the right message at the right time not only requires technological integrations, but also an orchestrated waltz between the CMO, CIO, and CTO. Throw in customer service, HR, and various and sundry other departments and you've got geometrically multiplying layers of complexity.

That's to say nothing, of course, about not creeping consumers out by acting snoopy or Big Brotherish. (And please, no data breaches!)

Consumer expectations are high when it comes to marketing. It's incumbent on brands to deliver the experiences they expect -- and even to exceed those expectations. Consumers have the power to go elsewhere now more than ever. That's exactly what they will do with ever-increasing levels of transparency, trust, service, experience, and pricing.

The marketing cloud can go a long way in helping to unify and connect the dots between marketing and advertising, between paid, owned, and earned media, as well as data and other functions. But we're far from resolution and standardization.